76 'the South Australian Naturalisi. 



FERDINAND VON MUELLER. 

 By B. S. Roach. 



Near the shores of the Baltic Sea stands the old German 

 city of Rostock, which even to-day retains many of the charac- 

 teristics of a medieval town. Our readers will be familiar wdth 

 the names of at least three eminent men who claim this old 

 Hanseatic town, or its vicinity, as their birthplace. One was 

 Blucher, that stout old warrior who rendered such effective 

 service at Waterloo ; another was von Moltke, whose scientific 

 strategy caused the German arms to triumph in 1870; and the 

 third was Ferdinand Mueller, who was to spend nearly half a 

 century in Australia, and to win high honours as one of the 

 ''princes of the botanical world," to quote the phrase applied 

 to him by Sir Joseph Hooker. 



Ferdinand James Henry Mueller was born in 1825 in a 

 house built over the principal gate of the quaint old city. His 

 father was a Commissioner of Customs, and had been a soldier. 

 His elevated residence was probably chosen because it com- 

 manded the place where the main trafiic converged to enter 

 Rostock, and because it was Avhcre the tolls might be easily 

 collected. We may assume that there was but an exiguous 

 salary to keep up the official dignity, and that the household 

 realized the wish of Agur when he prayed to be given neither 

 poverty iicr riches. The boy had three sisters. Later the 

 family removed to Schleswig, where both parents died, as did 

 also one of their daughters. Young Mueller became apprentice 

 to a pharmacist (Herr Becker), and served his master faith- 

 fully through the long, long hours of a German trading day, 

 and then, "while his companions slept," he toiled through the 

 night to gain a knowledge of academical subjects, so as to 

 qualify himself for entrance to the Kiel University. As he had 

 had no college preparation, he must have pursued his task with 

 unsparing energy. In those days the city of Kiel was under 

 the rule of the King of Denmark, though later it fell under the 

 domination of Germany, and became the Baltic entrance to the 

 great canal. Mueller gained his Ph.D. degree in 1847. Mean- 

 time his elder sister, Bertha, had shown symptoms of a pul- 

 monary complaint, and Dr. Ludwig Preiss, who had spent 

 several years in Western Australia, where he had made valuable 

 botanical researLhes, advised Mueller to emigrate to the sunny 

 lands of Australia. 



In July, 1847, the three, namely, Dr. Mueller and his 

 sisters Bertha and Clara, set sail from Bremen bound for Port 

 Adelaide. He probably selected this State because a large 



